Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Real-Life Zombies


This is pretty cool.
The fungus . . . was found living in carpenter ants in Thailand's rain forest, controlling their nervous system so they became a vessel with one purpose: helping the fungus reproduce.

As the fungus spreads through the ant's body it begins to act irregularly before it eventually dies . . . .
So, this is an angle that hasn't been explored, to my knowledge. It's almost always a virus causing zombification in the movies, or maybe a bacteria. But the fungus angle makes things even more interesting, as spores can do many amazing things (including survival indefinitely under harsh conditions--maybe even on a meteor in space?). Plus, the first scene of the movie practically writes itself: Teenagers get magic mushrooms. Zombification ensues. A perfect cliche beginning to a slight twist on cliche movies. Later on, you could have Dennis Quaid explain that this has been known to happen to ants in the rain forest, and he'll probably tie it in with something humans did to the environment. All nice morality tale veneers to a gory horror flick.

The ideal soundtrack would include Electric Wizard (for the opening scene) and any of the bands mentioned here, including Lich King, Bloodbath, Deaceased..., and Toxic Holocaust.

2 comments:

  1. I believe the movie Splinter dealt with a fungus that could reanimate dead tissue. Pretty gruesome. Acting is not terribly good, but otherwise an okay flick.

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  2. I seem to remember reading something about this a while back. Pretty cool stuff.

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